


For their ears only

by Nightlune



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 03:01:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29619570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightlune/pseuds/Nightlune
Summary: Nothing is ever truly lost.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 8
Kudos: 142





	For their ears only

**Author's Note:**

> Sadly, the characters are not mine. I'm only playing with them for a bit. If they were mine... Well, let's say poor Severus would have had a happier life.
> 
> No betas, so every single mistake is mine. Sorry!

Pain. That was all his sluggish brain could register when he finally woke up. Fire was running through his veins and, for a brief moment, he wished his merciless heart stopped pumping that blasted inferno.

Slowly opening his eyes, the thought disappeared as soon as it arrived, fear overwhelming the small coherence his mind had been able to muster. _“Where am I? Where the fuck am I?”_ he thought, cold sweat slowly covering his body. His eyes roamed around, getting used to the semi-darkness, barely moving his neck. To his left, a warm, golden glow that could only come from a streetlight softly illuminated the room, slithering through fine, grey silky curtains. A delicate summer breeze made its way inside, the sweet scent of roses reaching his nostrils.

He blinked fiercely and, trying to gather some lucidity, he attempted to sit up. Clearly, his lucidity was as fucked as he was. “Shit!” he groaned, collapsing on his back, his breaths sallow and excruciating.

Now his bloody lungs were also on fire.

Something to his right suddenly moved and he stopped breathing, not daring to make a sound. But whatever it was, it moved no more. _“Get a grip on yourself, for Merlin’s sake,”_ Severus scalded himself. Managing to take a few deep breaths without crying out loud, the Occlumency shields were immediately put in place. Slowly, he turned his neck to his right and a sigh of relief left his body, muscles instantly relaxing.

A sleeping young woman with impossible hair was curled up in an armchair next to the bed Severus was lying in. A thin blanket, most of it on the floor, was barely covering her body. Her bare left arm was resting on his bed, her hand mere inches away from his own, goosebumps layering her skin despite the soft summer night temperatures. Gradually remembering how he'd ended up there, Severus Snape allowed himself to look at Miss Hermione Granger.

To the untrained eye, her features looked peaceful, calm, placid. However, years of spying had given Severus a substantial understanding in human facial expressions. Subtly furrowed brows here. Slightly pinched lips there. Shadows accentuated the dark purple circles under her eyes and he briefly wondered how many nightmares accosted her, tormented her, depriving her from much needed rest. Her hair looked as wild as ever, long, thick curls falling chaotically down her face, her neck, her shoulders. Her chest moved imperceptibly with every breath, rising and falling, rising and falling, rising and falling. So young, so pure. And yet, so experienced, so knowledgeable. So fucking damaged.

Severus closed his eyes, Occlumency shields long time gone, destroyed, forgotten, and he let his mind travel back in time. How much pain and misery had he inflicted her in those damned days, weeks, after he rose up from the dead? To say that he had been angry would have been an understatement. How dared they to save his wretched, petty life? What right had they had to heal his wounds, the wounds that should have killed him, that should have made him disappear into oblivion once and for all? Oh, yes, he had been furious, enraged. And he had made damn sure that every single soul who had approached him in those days was aware about what he had thought of them all.

Miss Granger had been the first face he saw when he opened his eyes five months ago, mere two weeks after the Battle of Hogwarts. Miss Granger, all wide, weary brown eyes looking at him with such fear and yet such gladness. Miss Granger, with her stupid brown mane and her stupid big eyes and her stupid, broad smile. Thank Merlin he hadn’t been able to move; he could have easily wrapped his long fingers around her neck and gladly wiped that smile off her face. Instead, all he had been able to do was to scream in agony, mourning the sweet moments of darkness, of death he had been deprived of. They wouldn’t even allow him to fucking die in fucking peace.

Poppy’s face had been the second thing he looked at. Pushing Miss Granger out of the way, she had tried to talk some sense into him, explaining why they couldn’t have left him rot in the fucking Shrieking Shack while she’d applied firm pressure into his neck, begging him to stop moving, to stop screaming, to stop, to _just stop_. He hadn’t, of course. In the end, they had needed to sedate him.

In the following days after that outstanding awakening, Severus learned that it had been Miss Granger who had gone back to the Shrieking Shack to recover his broken body. And what a recovery, indeed. As soon as she’d realised he was still alive she had hastily sent her ridiculous Patronus to Poppy while clumsily attending to his deep wounds. Just like that, the bloody insufferable know-it-all had destroyed his most fervent desire, a desire that had motivated him to keep carrying on during the past 17 years of his life: to _fucking die_.

Consequently, Severus had done his worst. Fierce glares, cold silences, snarky comments, scathing sarcasm, outrageous insults. To him, nothing could have been snarky enough, scathing enough, insulting enough. And yet, the Princess of Gryffindor had shown a stoicism only worthy of a Slytherin. Undoubtedly, fucking _Potter_ had shown her the memories. She’d welcomed every disrespect with a smile, every abuse with a friendly look, every scorn with just a mere recoil. Merlin, how he had loathed her pity. But surely pity couldn't have been enough to keep a young woman impervious to his horrible comments and obnoxious behaviour. Why she’d kept coming back day after day, night after night, he hadn’t known. Masochism, surely. _“Doesn’t she have other things to do, better things to do than to take care of a nasty old man?”_ he had wondered. “Apparently not,” he’d mused to himself one evening when he had seen her approaching his bed, all curls and smiles, with a big tray full of food.

After a few days, Severus had given up, and so had his rage. Oh, anger still had been there, don’t you doubt it for one second, but it had been clear that Miss Granger’s aplomb was immutable. Therefore, he had let his coldness take over, coldness which turned into sterile pleasantries; which turned into tepid expectation; which turned into warm anticipation with every passing day she had spent with him. Thanks to Miss Granger’s persistence and stubbornness, the dark hole in which Severus had been trapped since he’d awaken had diminished substantially. At least, until that horrible night.

The sweet aroma of roses reached Severus’s nose again, making him lose his train of thought for a few seconds. Deeply breathing in and out he recalled that cruel night, a few weeks after the final battle, with a shudder.

He had pretended to be asleep, secretly enjoying the company of a certain witch next to his bed. Miss Granger had insisted on staying with him that night. She had talked about nightmares, and about not being able to sleep, and about how the armchairs in the Infirmary were better than most beds. She had fallen into a troubled slumber after that. At some point during the night, Minerva had come to the Infirmary, awakening her and taking her outside the curtains of his bed. Severus hadn’t been able to hear what exactly Minerva had told her, but the devastating cry that had come out from Miss Granger’s throat seconds afterwards had told him everything he’d needed to know: her parents had been found. And not alive.

An inexplicable sadness had overwhelmed him. She hadn’t deserved it. Such a bright, selfless, somewhat annoying and bossy but kind and brave and humane young woman hadn’t deserved all that suffering.

Minutes afterwards, Miss Granger had come back. And Severus hadn’t been able to face her. “Sir, _please_ ,” he had heard her say. He had known very well what she was pleading for. Comfort, empathy, warmth. Alien things for Severus. And so, he had kept pretending, maintaining his eyes closed, not moving a single muscle. Miss Granger had stayed there for a few more minutes, silently begging. And then, quietly, she had risen from the armchair and had left.

She had never come back.

Because of this, it had been Poppy and not Miss Granger who, upon his discharge months later, had informed him about the gruesome fits and attacks he would keep suffering all his life thanks to years and years of torture and violence. “I’m so sorry, Severus. I wish there was something else I could do,” Poppy had said with deep sorrow in her eyes.

He had managed to deal with the first few fits on his own. He had got used to the pain, to the terror, to waking up in his own filth after not being able to control his sphincters, to the bruises, to the embarrassment. However, the last one had been… Not pleasant. At all. He had barely been able to gather his strength and wits, flooing Poppy before passing out. Why he had ended up in Miss Granger’s company after all those months of silence between them was unknown to him.

Back into the present and surrounded by the cooling summer breeze and the ever-present scent of roses, he realised he didn’t care. Opening his eyes again, he marvelled at the vision next to him. With a low groan, he slowly pushed himself onto his right side, being able to observe Miss Granger while avoiding the blasted cramps on his neck. This position was much more painful than lying on his back, but he honestly couldn’t mind less.

He looked back at her arm, placidly resting on his bed. And, only then, he saw something on her forearm. Furrowing his eyebrows and fighting back a cry of pain, he moved his left hand towards it and his fingers gently touched her skin. It was cool and soft. And yet, there was something roughening the surface, a surface that should be intact. Lightly repositioning her forearm, he finally had his answer. _Mudblood_.

His throat quickly tightened and he began to drown; to drown in his sorrow, to drown in the injustice of existence, to drown in the fucking choices he had made in his miserable, pitiful life. His callous fingers smoothly caressed the uneven scars and, suddenly, a small and delicate hand covered his. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t face her. How could he? How could he look into the eyes of the person who saved his life, who selflessly and willingly took care of him despite his hatred, his resentment? How could he looked into the eyes of the woman whom he had failed to console when all her world crumbled around?

The same hand that seconds before was covering his own touched his chin, lifting it slightly. And Severus found a bit of strength in that warm touch. Blinking lazily, he looked at her and let himself fall into the depths of those kind, brown eyes. Eyes that were looking at him with infinite compassion, with no shadow of pity, resentment, malice.

“I am so, so sorry,” Severus whispered at last.

Miss Granger’s eyes closed and thick tears fell down her cheeks. And yet, she was smiling. Smiling, for Merlin’s sake. She opened her eyes again and, removing her hand from his chin, she took her index finger to her lips, politely asking him to not utter a sound, to not speak a single word. Reaching for a side table to her right she picked up a small, delicate vial. And with it in her left hand, she stood up from the armchair and slowly began to sit on the bed.

Bewitched, Severus found himself speechless, carefully following each of her movements. When she removed the cork from the vial and took it to her lips, he waited. When she locked her eyes with his and slowly started to lie down next to him, resting on her left side, forehead against forehead, he waited. When she moved her right hand towards his face, the back of her fingers gently touching his left cheek, he shuddered, and yet, he waited. When her mouth approached his and finally, _finally_ their lips touched, he held his breath, waiting, always waiting. But when her lips parted against his, when her tongue opened his mouth and pushed the sweet Pain Relief Potion inside, he couldn’t wait any longer.

The moan that escaped his throat when he felt her soft, velvety tongue inside his mouth would have embarrassed him if he hadn't been completely enraptured by the experience. He drank the potion thirstily, as if he had never tasted anything so succulent in his life. The soreness, the pain he had been experiencing since he woke up in that fresh, heavenly room instantly disappeared, inexorably being replaced by another kind of ache, of delicious agony.

He allowed her to explore his mouth freely, feeling her on his upper palate, the insides of his cheeks, stroking, biting, tasting. And only when she licked his bottom lip, tracing it with the tip of her exquisite tongue and sucking it into her mouth, he allowed himself to grab a fistful of her wild curly hair with his left hand, pushing her closer, deepening the kiss as much as possible. The perspective of drowning in her mouth filled him with complete, utter happiness.

His kisses began to become erratic, urgent, desperate, and she responded with equal need. Laboured breathing, arduous gasping, swollen lips, blazing tongues, incomprehensible whispers lost in the shelter of the night, for their ears only, painted the shadows with the colours of want, of need. So much agonizing thirst that couldn’t be so easily satiated.

Panting, he broke the kiss and looked into her eyes, pupils dilated and full of wild desire. Freeing the fistful of hair he had been grabbing with too much force, his hand moved towards her bottom lip, grazing it gently with his thumb. Breathlessly, she opened her mouth and began to suck the tip, fearlessly staring at him. With a small whimper, he pushed it inside and she began to circle it with her tongue, licking him, taunting him, daring him to go further. When her small hand touched his groin ever so slightly he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. Head falling back and lips parting, irregular gasps and deep moans were the only sounds feeding the silence. Gently releasing his thumb, she moved her head forward and, taking advantage of his position, she leisurely started licking the scars that Nagini had forever marked him with, sealing each stroke of her tongue with featherlight kisses. “So much pain… So much sorrow…” he barely heard her whisper against his skin.

After agonizing minutes of light neck kisses and groin strokes, Miss Granger backed off. Never breaking eye contact, she kneeled on top of the cotton sheets that covered his thin body and extended her hands towards him as an invitation to imitate her movements. Severus instinctively grabbed her hands and positioned himself in front of her. His treacherous body showed the unmistakeable arousal, but he didn’t care. For just one night he desperately wanted to let all his guards completely fall. Apparently, he was succeeding; his body was helplessly trembling out of sheer need.

Miss Granger removed his white shirt with deliberate slowness and he flinched slightly when he realised he was almost naked in front of her, breaking eye contact with obvious embarrassment. She noticed his discomfort and she immediately moved closer, softly grabbing his face with both hands.

“Look at me,” she gently commanded, her thumbs lightly caressing his cheeks, but Severus was frozen, unable to move. She didn’t give up.

 _“Look… at… me,”_ she whispered, quoting the heart-breaking last words he uttered in the Shrieking Shack all those months ago with such emotion her voice failed her at the last word.

“Why?” he quietly asked.

“Because I want to look into your eyes when I touch you for the first time.”

Startled, he looked at her and a smile appeared on her beautiful face. “There you are,” she simply said.

Her warm hands began to trace his neck, his shoulder, his arms. Her eyes never left his. He was acutely aware of every scar in his body and, deep inside, he was terrified. Terrified she came to her senses and left him there, cold, trembling, alone. All alone. But her hands kept roaming his body, desire written in her dilated pupils. Her thumbs grazed his hardened nipples and he let out a quiet sob. Suddenly, her left hand grabbed a handful of sleek, black hair while her right one kept taunting his sparse chest hair, his abdomen, his navel. When the top of her fingers reached the waistband of his pants, he thought he would faint. His breathing was ragged and he could barely keep his hands from tearing, from destroying her oversized T-shirt, from vigorously pushing her on her back and lick every single inch of her body.

She finally reached her destination and started stroking him ever so gently, from base to tip. Severus couldn’t help letting out a thick groan. Coating the tip of his length with the precum that her touch had elicited, she moved her wet fingers down his shaft, cupping his balls and giving them a soft pull. His voice failed him and before he could utter a sound, her fingers kept moving past his balls, brushing his perineum back and forth. And when her index finger found the puckered hole and began rubbing it, Severus Snape begged for the first time in his life.

“Please…” he moaned deliriously, breathlessly, foreheads touching. “ _Please_ , I can’t take it any longer.”

He tried to back off, to conserve the small amount of dignity he had left, but her hold at the back of his head was strong and the lust in her eyes was maddening. Not listening, Miss Granger slowly push the tip of her finger inside and Severus finally lost the small self-control he had left.

With a furious growl he grabbed her neck and pushed her on her back, covering her body with his. Panting madly, his right hand teared off her underwear mercilessly and Miss Granger cried out loud. Wildly lowering his pants, he freed his impressive erection at last and began to rub its head against her folds, up and down, up and down. She was so wet, so warm. He sobbed feeling the tight entrance, the sheer need of burying himself deep inside her consuming his dark soul. Her legs were open widely, welcoming, and her chest was heaving with lust, with desire.

“Say it,” he groaned, entrancingly looking at their joint sexes, spreading her juices with the tip of his length all over her heat.

Silence.

He looked at her and she returned his blazing stare, face exquisitely flushed, brown curls softly sticking to her forehead covered in small pearls of sweat.

 _“Say… it,”_ he ordered, pushing the tip inside her tight hole and employing all his determination to pull back. Shallow whimpers and unintelligible words were escaping her lips. She looked feverishly aroused. His hold on her neck tightened ever so slightly, undoing her at last.

“Fuck me,” she panted. “ _Please_ , fuck me,” she kept repeating like a private chant.

“Please… Hermione, please… _Say it_ ,” he implored, his voice failing him. Finally, a light of understanding crossed her big, wide eyes.

 _“Severus…”_ she whispered.

The moment his name left her mouth he thrusted deeply, burying himself inside her with a roaring cry. Hermione couldn’t stop crooning his name while their mating became savage, brutal. Every thrust, every moan, every groan was food for their malnourished souls.

When Severus could no longer carry on postponing his release, he stopped. Hermione was whimpering, eyes unfocused with blazing desire. Never breaking eye contact, he wandlessly vanished her T-shirt and let himself fall onto his elbows, both shuddering and moaning desperately at the skin-to-skin feeling. Tantalisingly, he began rocking his hips against hers slowly, so slowly. Every long thrust was heavenly torture for them both. Violently shaking with the very much needed release, their lips touched one more time. And with one last deep thrust, while savouring each other’s mouths, they reached bliss together, breathing each other’s moans, tasting each other’s tears. Hermione’s tight walls clenched around his length, ruthlessly milking his throbbing member.

Loud pants became soft breaths; soft breaths became sweet, gentle caresses. And while they tightly held each other inside the cotton sheets that covered the small bed, not a single inch of skin untouched, secret whispers were spoken in the night. For their ears only.


End file.
